Mobile Tracker User Guide

Table of Contents

Overview of Mobile Tracker

This lab demonstrates the use of TI mmWave sensors for the detection of obstacles for mobile platforms. Its pointcloud and tracker outputs allows the device to easily flag potential obstacles, even when the environment is dynamically changing.

The key feature in this lab is the group tracker algorithm implemented in the MSS on the ARM processor and its tuning which allows it to detect objects which are both static or dynamic (with respect to the sensor)

This lab runs on the xWR6843 mmWave sensor, and includes configurations to run on the IWR6843ISK evaluation module with a python visualizer.

Quickstart

This section will briefly go through how to set up and run the demo for evaluation.

Requirements

Before continuing with this lab, users should first run the out of box demo for the EVM. This will enable users to gain familiarity with the sensor’s capabilities as well as the various tools used across all labs in the Radar Toolbox.

Hardware

🛑 IWR6843 ES2.0 Only
This lab is only compatible with ES2.0 version of IWR6843. On ISK, check the device version on your IWR6843 using the on-chip device markings as shown below

1. If line 4 reads 678A, you have an ES2 device. In this case, this lab is compatible with your EVM.
2. If line 4 reads 60 GHZi, you have an older ES1 device. In this case, the lab is NOT compatible with your EVM. ES2 IWR6843ISK boards are orderable from the EVM link above.

Software

1. Mount the EVM

This demo is intended to be mounted to a moving platform suitable. For evaluation, something like a cart or a remote controlled car can be used to simulate a robotic platform, if one is not available.

The EVM should be mounted facing forward, with a slight tilt (either upwards or downwards) to minimize reflections, as shown below.

2. Flash the EVM

1. Set the hardware to flashing mode by following the instructions in the EVM Setup Guide
2. Flash the binary corresponding to your device from the prebuilt binaries folder by following the instructions for using UniFlash
3. Set the hardware to functional mode by following the instructions in the EVM Setup Guide

3. Run the GUI

1. Launch the GUI by running the executable located in the tools folder.
   C:\ti\<radar_toolbox_version>\tools\Visualizers\Industrial_visualizer
2. Enter the two COM ports into the proper fields if they did not auto-populate. These can be found by looking at the computer’s device manager
3. Select Mobile Tracker in the Config Type dropdown
4. Click connect and ensure it has connected properly. If it does not connect, please recheck the COM ports and ensure they are not currently in use.
5. Click Select Configuration and find the correct chirp configuration file for your device/EVM from the chirp_configs folder of this lab
6. The boundary boxes should now appear on the graph, if not, please recheck the selected configuration file
7. Once the proper configuration is selected, click *Start and After a few moments, points should begin displaying as the device starts chirping. Tracks are visualized as cubes around groups of points.

Developer’s Guide

This section will go over how to open and modify the source for both the demo as well as the visualizer

Modifying Device Software

CCS Development Requirements

In addition to the materials required in the quickstart requirements, the following resources are needed/suggested

Importing CCS Projects

After downloading the necessary software, open CCS and perform the first time setup, which will configure the workspace and install the necessary modules.

Once CCS is open to the standard view, go to the project explorer pane, right click, select Import, and then select CCS Projects. At the top of window, next to Select search directory, click browse. You will now want to navigate using your file explorer to your installation location for the Radar Toolbox, and then go to the directory for this lab. Once in the Mobile_Tracker folder, click the Select Folder button. Once this is done, you should see a list of projects in the directory populate the previous window. Check the box next to the proper MSS project for your device (which should automatically pull in the DSS project) and then hit finish.

Building the Project in CCS

At this point, you can now begin to make modifications to the project as desired.

Once you are ready to build, right click the DSS project and select Build Project. This may take a few minutes. Once complete, you should either see a build finished message in the console or errors in the problems pane. If it has successfully built, you can then go to the output folder, which is named after the build configuration (typically Debug), and see a file with a .xe674 extension, which is the image that can be used for debugging the DSS.

Next, you will want to repeat this process for the MSS project. It is important that the DSS project is built prior to building the MSS project, so that the post-build steps on the MSS can create the combined binary. Once the MSS has successfully built, the output folder should contain 2 files of interest. The first will have a .xer4f extension, which can be used to debug the MSS. The second file will be have a .bin extension, which can be used to flash the device in order to run without debugging.

Flashing the Built Project

If you want to run the demo without debugging, follow the steps in Quickstart for flashing, but instead you will want to flash the binary that has been built by the MSS project. This can be found by going to the following directory <CCS_Workspace>\<lab_name>_mss\<build_configuration>\<demo_name>.bin

If you intend to step through and debug using CCS, please follow the steps in the CCS Debugging Guide to load the images generated by the DSS and MSS projects. Please note that this requires the mmWaveICBoost EVM in addition to the antenna module.

Work with GUI Source Code

The source files for this GUI are located in the following directory: <Radar_TOOLBOX_INSTALL_DIR>\radar_toolbox_<VER>\tools\Visualizers\Industrial_Visualizer\

In order to launch the GUI from source, you will need to have the proper python modules installed, which can are included in the environment setup batch file that can be found in the visualizer source directory. Once installed, it can be launched via a terminal with the command py gui_main.py. This enables changes to be made to the python visualizer and tested easily.

Tuning

When tuning this lab, there are a few key configurable options that you may want to modify when tuning and testing the lab. Tuning can broken down into two areas: the point cloud/detection layer and the tracker layer.

Tuning the Point Cloud

The detection layer has many parameters that go into the configuration (cfg) file. One of the parameters that need to be highlighted is the CFAR parameters. The constant false alarm rate (CFAR) is an algorithm that is applied to the 2D range-azimuth heatmap for detection and point cloud detection.With regards to configuration tuning, CFAR is the most impactful parameter with regards to the point cloud’s behavior.

CFAR values used in Mobile_Tracker_6843_ISK.cfg

//subFrameIdx, procDirection, mode, noiseWin, guardLen, divShift, cyclic, threshold, peakGrouping

cfarCfg -1 0 2 8 4 3 0 20 0
cfarCfg -1 1 0 4 2 3 1 15 0

//subFrameIdx, procDirection, min, max

cfarFovCfg -1 0 0 11.11
cfarFovCfg -1 1 -2.04 2.04

If the point cloud for certain objects is too sparse, then the cfarCfg threshold parameter may need to be lowered. For more details on this parameter, check the Configuration File Format pages in the mmWave SDK User Guide. For more details on tuning detection layer parameters, check the pdf linked below. Detection Layer Parameter Tuning Guide for the 3D People Counting Demo – Rev 3.0

Tuning the Tracker

The parameters below are all within the cfg and sets up the tracker.

staticBoundaryBox -1.8 1.8 0.4 7.8 -0.2 1.8
boundaryBox -2 2 0.5 8 -0.3 2
sensorPosition 0.5 0 0
gatingParam 4 2 2 2 10
stateParam 10 5 5 50 1 600
allocationParam 20 20 0.05 4 2 2
maxAcceleration 0.1 0.1 0.1
trackingCfg 1 2 250 20 20 260 90
presenceBoundaryBox -3 3 2 6 0.5 2.5

Some of the most common issues that can occur within the tracker layer is seeing too many tracks (ghosting), or objects not being recognized when there are not enough tracks.allocationParam is the parameter the focus on candidate points and whether they should be turned into a track. This is done via applying thresholds on the SNR, density, and velocity of the points in order to get accurate tracking.

For more details on tuning the tracker layer parameters, check the pdf linked below.

Tracker Layer Parameter Tuning Guide for the 3D People Counting Demo – Rev 3.0

Interfacing with the Device via UART

Similar to the majority of the other Radar Toolbox example projects, this example project utilizes a pair of UART COM ports to communicate with a host PC. The CLI port is used to send commands to the device for configuration (typically by sending a cfg file) while the data port is used to stream data from the device to the host after the device has began chirping.

CLI Commands

This demo supports all CLI commands implemented by the xWR6843 Out Of Box Demo as well as the commands used for the tracker layer.

• For details on CLI commands implemented in the Out Of Box Demo, please refer to the mmWave SDK User’s Guide, specifically the section titled Configuration File Format
• For details on CLI commands implemented as part of the tracker layer, please refer to the Tracker Layer Tuning Guide

Output Data Format

This lab leverages the same output format as the xWR6843 Out Of Box Demo with an additional Type-Length-Value (TLV) packet for the occupancy information. For more information on the Out Of Box Demo output format, please refer to the Understanding UART Data Output Format guide

This demo outputs TLV’s of the following types:

• MMWDEMO_OUTPUT_MSG_SPHERICAL_POINTS
• MMWDEMO_OUTPUT_MSG_DETECTED_POINTS_SIDE_INFO
• MMWDEMO_OUTPUT_MSG_TRACKERPROC_3D_TARGET_LIST
• MMWDEMO_OUTPUT_MSG_TRACKERPROC_TARGET_INDEX

Need More Help?

• Additional resources in the documentation of the mmWave SDK:
  • mmWave SDK Module Doc located at <mmwave_sdk_install_dir>/docs/mmwave_sdk_module_documentation.html
  • mmWave SDK User’s Guide located at <mmwave_sdk_install_dir>/docs/mmwave_sdk_user_guide.pdf
• Search for your issue or post a new question on the mmWave E2E forum